Invisible prey ld-17 Page 16

  “There's no consistent method. But if you look at the killings structurally, you see that they are otherwise identical. It looks to me like the killers deliberately varied the method of murder, to obscure the connections, but they couldn't obscure what they were up to. Which was theft.”

  “Very heavy,” Lucas said.

  “Yes. By the way, one of the things that hung Duane Child is that he was driving an old Volkswagen van, yellow, or tan,” Sandy said. “The night that Toms was murdered, a man was out walking his dog, an Irish setter. Anyway, he saw a white van in the neighborhood, circling the block a couple of times. This man owns an appliance company, and he said the van was a full-sized Chevrolet, an Express, and he said he knew that because he owns five of them. The cops said that he just thought the van was white, because of the weird sodium lights around there, that the lights made the yellow van look whiter. But the man stuck with it, he said the van was a Chevy. A Chevy van doesn't look anything like the Volkswagen that Child drove. I know because I looked them up on Google. I believe the van was the killers' vehicle, and they needed the van to carry away the stuff they were stealing.”

  “Was there a list of stolen stuff?”

  “Yes, and it's just like the list Carol showed me, of the stuff taken from Bucher's house. All small junk and jewelry. Obvious stuff. And in Toms's case, a coin collection which never showed up again. But I think-and Carol said you think this happened at Bucher's-I think they took other stuff, too. Antiques and artworks, and they needed the van to move it.”

  “Have you read the entire file?” Lucas asked.

  She shook her head. “Most of it.”

  “Finish it, and then go back through it. Get some of those sticky flag things from Carol, and every time you find another point in the argument, flag it for me,” Lucas said. “I've got to do some politics, but I'll be back late in the afternoon. Can you have it done by then?”

  “Maybe. There's an ocean of stuff,” she said. “We Xeroxed off almost a thousand pages yesterday, Bill and I.”

  “Do as much as you can. I'll see you around four o'clock.”

  Before he left, he checked out with Rose Marie, and with Mitford, the governor's aide. Mitford said, “I had an off-the-record with Cole. He doesn't plan to do any investigation. He's says it'll rise or fall on the BCA presentation. They could possibly put it off for a couple of weeks, if you need to develop some elements, but his people are telling him they should go ahead and indict. That they've got enough, as long as the Barths testify.”

  “Everybody wants to get rid of it; finish it, except maybe the Klines,” Lucas said.

  Virgil Flowers was waiting in the parking lot of the Dakota County courthouse. Lucas circled around, picked him up, and they drove into the town of Hastings for lunch.

  Like Lucas, Flowers was in his grand-jury suit: “You look more like a lawyer than I do,” Lucas said.

  “That's impossible.”

  “No, it's not. My suit's in extremely good taste. Your suit looks like a lawyer suit.”

  “Thanks,” Flowers said. “I just wasted thirty bucks on it, and you're putting it down.”

  They went to a riverside cafe, sitting alone on a back patio with checkered-cloth-covered tables, looking toward the Mississippi; ordered hamburgers and Cokes. “Everything is arranged,” Lucas said, when the waitress had gone.

  “Yes. The whole package is locked up in the courthouse. The jury starts meeting at one o'clock, Cole and Conoway will make the first presentation, then they'll bring in Russell from Child Protection to talk about the original tip. Then you go on, testify about assigning the investigation to me, and you'll also testify about chain-of-custody on the evidence that came in later, that everything is okay, bureaucratically. Then I go on and testify about the investigation, then we have the tech people coming up, then they get the Barths. After that, they go to dinner. They reconvene at six-thirty, Conoway summarizes, and then they decide whether they need more, or to vote an indictment.”

  “Does Conoway think they'll vote?”

  “She says they'll do what she tells them to do, and unless something weird happens, they're gonna vote,” Flowers said.

  “Okay. You've done a good job on this, Virgil.”

  “Nice to work in the Cities again,” Flowers said, “but I gotta get back south. You know Larry White from Jackson County?”

  “Yeah. You're talking about that body?”

  “Down the riverbank. Yeah. It was the girl. DNA confirms it, they got it back yesterday,” Flowers said. “The thing is, she went to school with Larry's son and they were friendly.

  Not dating, but the son knew her pretty well since elementary school, and Larry doesn't want to investigate it himself. He wants us carrying the load, because… you know, small town.”

  “Any chance his kid actually did it?” Lucas asked.

  “Nah,” Flowers said. “Everybody in town says he's a good kid, and he's actually got most of an alibi, and like I said, he wasn't actually seeing the girl. Didn't run with her crowd. Larry's just trying to avoid talk. He's got the election coming up, and they haven't got the killer yet… if there is one.”

  “Any ideas? She didn't get on the riverbank by herself.”

  The waitress came back with the Cokes, and said, with a smile, “I haven't seen you fellas around before. You lawyers?”

  “God help us,” Flowers said. When she'd gone, Flowers said, “There's a guy name Floyd.

  He's a couple years older than the girl, he's been out of school for a while. Does seasonal work at the elevator and out at the golf course, sells a little dope. I need to push him. I think he was dealing to the girl, and I think she might have been fooling around with him.”

  “Any dope on the postmortem?”

  “No. She'd been down way too long. When they pulled her off the riverbank, they got most of her clothes and all of the bones except from one foot and a small leg bone, which probably got scattered off by dogs or coyotes or whatever. There's no sign of violence on the bones. No holes, no breaks, hyoid was intact. I think she might have OD'd.”

  “Can you crack the kid?”

  “That's my plan…”

  They sat shooting the breeze, talking about cases, talking about fishing. Flowers had a side career going as an outdoor writer, and was notorious for dragging a fishing boat around the state while he was working. Lucas asked, “You go fishing last night?”

  “Hour,” Flowers admitted. “Got a line wet, while I was thinking about the grand jury.”

  “You're gonna have to decide what you want to do,” Lucas said. “I don't think you can keep writing and keep working as a cop. Not full-time, anyway.” 'Td write, if I could,” Flowers said. “Trouble is, I made fifteen thousand dollars last year, writing. If I went full-time, I could probably make thirty. In other words, Ld starve.”

  “Still…”

  “I know. I think about it,” Flowers said. “All I can do is, keep juggling. You see my piece last month in Outdoor Life?' “I did, you know?” Lucas said. “Not bad, Virgil. In fact, it was pretty damn good. Guys were passing it around the office.”

  The first session of the grand jury was as routine as Flowers had suggested it would be. Lucas sat in a waiting room until 1:45, got called in. The grand jury was arrayed around a long mahogany-grained table, with two assistant county attorneys managing files. The lead attorney, Susan Conoway had Lucas sworn in by a clerk, who then left.

  She led him through his handling of the original tip, to the assignment of Flowers, and through the BCAs handling procedures for evidence. After checking to make sure the signatures on the affidavits were really his, she sent him on his way.

  In the hallway, Flowers said, “I'll call you about that Jackson case,” and Lucas said, “See ya,” and he was gone.

  Back at the office, Sandy had gone.

  “I sent her home,” Carol said, as she trailed Lucas into his office. The file was sitting squarely in front of Lucas's chair, with a dozen blue plastic flags sticki
ng out of it. “She was about to fall off the chair. She said you could call her there, and she'd come in… but I think you could let it go until tomorrow. She's really beat.”

  “Did she finish the file?” Lucas took off his jacket, hung it on his coatrack, and began rolling up his shirtsleeves.

  “Yes. She flagged the critical points. She said she flagged them both pro and con, for and against it being the same killers.”

  “She's pretty good,” Lucas said. “I hope she doesn't go overboard, start campaigning to free this Child guy. If his appeal got turned down, we'd be better off working it from the other end. Find the real killers.”

  He started on the file, looking first at the flagged items, and going back to the original arrest, the interviews, and immediately saw how Child got himself in trouble: He hadn't denied anything. He had, in fact, meekly agreed that he might have done it. He simply didn't know-and he stuck to that part of the story.

  There were other bits of evidence against him. He'd been in the neighborhood the night of the murder; he'd stopped to see if he could get some money from his father.

  His father had given him thirty dollars, and Child had spent some of it at a Subway, on a sandwich, and had been recognized there by a former schoolmate.

  He knew the Toms house. He was driving a van, and a van had been seen circling the block. He had cuts on his face and one arm, which he said he got from a fall, but which might have been defensive cuts received as he strangled Toms. On the other hand, Toms had no skin under his fingernails-there'd been no foreign DNA at all.

  Child had what the police called a history of violence, but he'd never been arrested for it-as far as Lucas could tell, he'd had a number of fights with another street person near the room where he lived, and Child had said that the other bum had started the fights: “He's a crazy, I never started anything.”

  But it had been the lack of any denial that had hung him up.

  At the sentencing, he made a little speech apologizing to the victim's family, but still maintained that he couldn't remember the crime.

  The judge, who must have been running for reelection, if they reelected judges in Iowa, said in a sentencing statement that he rejected Child's memory loss, believed that he did remember, and condemned him as a coward for not admitting it. Child got life.

  Carol stuck her head in, said, “I forgot to tell you, Weather got done early and she was heading home. She wants to take the kids out to the Italian place.” “I'll call her…”

  The Italian place at six, Weather said; she'd load the kids up, and meet him there.

  Lucas looked at his watch. Four-twenty. He could get to the Italian place in ten minutes, so he had an hour and a half to read. It'd be quiet. People were headed out of the building, Carol was getting her purse together, checking her face.

  He heard the phone ring, and then Carol called, “You got Flowers on one. Flowers the person.”

  Lucas picked up: “Yeah.”

  “We got another problem.”

  “Ah, shit. What is it?” Lucas asked.

  “Jesse didn't come home from school,” Flowers said.

  “What?”

  “Didn't come home. She left school on time, Kathy checked with her last class and some friends of hers, they saw her on the street, but she never showed up at home.

  Kathy might be bullshitting us, but she seems pretty stressed. Conoway doesn't know whether to be pissed or worried. The grand jury's been put on hold for a while, but if we don't find her in the next hour or so, they're gonna send them home. I'm headed up that way, but it's gonna take a while. If you've got a minute, you could run over to their house…”

  “Goddamnit,” Lucas said. “If they're fucking with us, I'm gonna break that woman's neck.”

  “Hope that's what it is, but Kathy… I don't know, Lucas. Didn't sound like bullshit,” Flowers said. “Of course, it could be something that Jesse thought up on her own.

  But she was set to go, she seemed ready…”

  “I'm on my way,” Lucas said. “Call me when you get close.”

  Kathy Barth was standing in front of her house talking to a uniformed St. Paul cop and a woman in a green turban. Lucas parked at the curb and cut across the small front lawn. They all turned to look at him. Barth called, “Did you find her?” and Lucas knew from the tone of her voice that she wasn't involved in whatever had happened to her daughter; wherever she'd gone.

  “I just heard,” Lucas said. “Virgil Flowers was down at the grand jury, he's on his way up.” To the cop: “You guys looking?”

  The cop shrugged, “Yeah, we're looking, but she's only a couple hours late. We don't usually even look this soon, for a sixteen-year-old.”

  “Get everybody looking,” Lucas said. “She was supposed to be talking to a grand jury about now. If there's a problem, I'll talk to the chief. We need everybody you can spare.” To Barth: “We need to know what she was wearing… the names of all her friends. I need to talk to her best friend right now.”

  The woman in the turban hadn't said anything, but now spoke to Barth: “Kelly McGuire.”

  “I called, but she's not home yet,” Barth said. Her face was taut with anxiety. She'd seen it all before, on TV, the missing girl, the frantic mother. “She's at a dance place and the phone's off the hook. She won't be home until five-thirty.”

  “You know what dance place?” Lucas asked.

  “Over on Snelling, by the college,” Barth said. “Just south of Grand.”

  “I know it,” Lucas said to the cop, “I'm going over there. Let me give you my cell number…” The cop wrote the number on a pad. “If you need any more authority, call me. I'll call the governor if I have to. Talk to whoever you need to, and tell them that this could be serious. You want everybody out there looking, because the press is gonna get on top of this and by tomorrow, if we don't have this kid, the shit is gonna hit the fan.”

  “All right, all right,” the cop said. And to Barth: “You said she had a yellow vest…”

  Lucas hustled back to his car, cranked it, and took off. The dance studio was called Aphrodite, the name in red neon with green streaks around it. The windows were covered by Venetian blinds, but through the slots between the blinds and the window posts, you could see the hardwood floor and an occasional dancer in tights.

  Lucas parked at a hydrant and pushed through the studio's outer door. An office was straight ahead, the floor to the right, with a door in the back leading to the locker rooms; it smelled like a gym. An instructor had a half-dozen girls working from a barre, the girls all identically dressed in black. Another woman, older, sat behind a desk in the office, and peered at Lucas over a pair of reading glasses. Lucas stepped over and she said, “Can I help you?”

  Lucas held out his ID. “I'm with the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. We have a missing girl, and I need to talk to one of your students. A Kelly McGuire?”

  “Who's missing?” the woman asked.

  “One of her classmates. Is Kelly still here?”

  “Yes… Just a minute.” She got up, stepped onto the floor, and called, “Kelly? Could you come over here for a moment?”

  McGuire was a short, slender, dark-haired girl who actually looked like professional dancers Lucas had met. She frowned as she stepped away from the barre and walked across the floor: “Did something happen?”

  Everybody paused to listen. Lucas said, “Ah, I'm a police officer, I need to talk to you for a second about a friend of yours. Could you step outside, maybe?”

  “I'll have to get my shoes… Or, it's nice, I could go barefoot…” She took off her dance shoes and followed Lucas outside. “What happened?”

  “Have you seen Jesse Barth today?” Lucas asked.

  “Yes. When school got out.” Her eyes were wide; she'd see it all on TY too. “I talked to her, we usually walk home, but I had a band practice and then my dance lesson… Is she hurt?”

  “We can't locate her at the moment,” Lucas said. “She was…”

 
“She was going to testify to a jury today, tonight,” McGuire said. “She was pretty nervous about it.”

  “If she decided to chicken out, where would she go?” Lucas asked. “Does she have any special friends, a boyfriend?”

  McGuire was troubled: “Jeez, I don't know…”

  “Look, Kelly: if she doesn't want to testify, she doesn't have to. But. We can't find her. That's what we're worried about,” Lucas said. “Somebody saw her on the street, walking home, but she never showed up. We've got to know where she might've gone. If she's okay, we can work it out. But if she's not…”

  “Ah…” She stared at Lucas for a moment, then turned and looked at a bus, and then said, “Okay. If she hid out, it'd be either Mike Sochich's house, or she might have gone to Katy Carlson's-or she might have taken a bus to Har Mar, to go to a movie.

  Sometimes she goes up to Har Mar and sits there for hours.”

  “Where can I find these people…?”

  McGuire was an assertive sort: She said, “Give me two minutes to change. I'll show you. That'd be fastest.”

  She took five minutes, and hustled out with a bag of clothes. In the car, she said, “Turn around, we want to go over to the other side of Ninety-four, into Frogtown.

  Mike would be the best possibility… Best to go down Ninety-four to Lexington, then up Lexington. I'll show you where to turn…”

  He did a U-turn on Snelling, caught a string of greens, accelerated down the ramp onto I-94, then up at Lexington, left, and north to Thomas, right, down the street a few blocks until McGuire pointed at a gray-shingled house behind a waist-high chain-link fence. Lucas pulled over and McGuire slumped down in her seat and said, “I'll wait here.”

  Lucas said, with a grin, “If she's here, she's gonna know you ratted her out. Might as well face the music.” He popped the door to get out, and heard her door pop a second later. She followed him across the parking strip to the gate. There was a bare spot in the yard with a chain and a stake, and on the end of the chain, the same yellow-white dog he'd seen at the Barth's.